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Maybe I’m an outliner. But I’m not buying it. To me, it misses to analyze and address a fundamental problem of why google “got so bad”. I believe this is main

by baxtr 4y ago

Maybe I’m an outliner. But I’m not buying it. To me, it misses to analyze and address a fundamental problem of why google “got so bad”. I believe this is mainly a problem of the top 5%. There is reason why google presents their results like they do. It’s not like they’re a bunch of idiots not knowing their craft. Yes, for those of use around the internet since 1996, the results got worse. But since then the entire population got online. They’re just fine with the top results. They’re good enough. Google’s machine knows and sees this in the data. I am sure there is value in summarizing and querying the text. But this will increase the convenience not necessarily the quality of results.

drpixie 4y ago
Agree. But not sure what you mean by the "top 5%". Google have deliberately stopped trying to provide an index of the web. They now focus solely on revenue (advertising) maximization. A search will show paid sites, then popular sites, up to a few pages, and that's it. For example, search for "brioche buns" - you can't convince me that there are only 420 pages in the entire www that refer to "brioche buns" :(
- charcircuit 4y ago
  >About 11,300,000 results I get a lot more than 400.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - throwaway1851 4y ago
    Those results aren’t real. If you actually try to retrieve them, you will find out that Google stops delivering unique results after a few pages. (Other search engines are the same in this respect.)
    - charcircuit 4y ago
      Yes, they are real. It will stop ranking them after a few pages because the results become worse and it becomes too expensive to rank.
- Falkon1313 4y ago
  It seems if a site is not selling something, and/or buying ads, and isn't in the most popular social media sites, Google just dumps it into the "No one knows what lies beyond this border" bin. Tons of forums, blogs, personal and informational sites, etc., all hidden somewhere in the fog beyond the 'edge of the world' and 'here be dragons' signs.
- baxtr 4y ago
  Sorry I was not more precise. I meant the top 5% of internet users. The most experienced / most demanding users.
friend_and_foe 4y ago
I'm not buying this explanation. Google isn't delivering information based on what's relevant to users, Google is funneling you into their business: to funnel you into someone else's business. And they're doing it not by being very useful, but by being the default you reach for on every product you buy. To set up your life to not use google is a big hassle, I can safely say this because I've done it. This is not simply an issue of "your needs are simply more advanced than normies", this is an issue of "indexing the internet doesnt work, we can't win the cat and mouse game of SEO, so we will just ensure a userbase by controlling the environment around everyone." Sprinkle in a little bit of gaslighting and information control and you've got the current state of affairs with regard to internet search.
- marginalia_nu 4y ago
  This is mainly an effect of Google being such a dominant player though. The sort of search results that are dominating Google is essentially a sort of local minimum in the fitness function. It's pretty easy to create an search engine that outperforms google in dealing with SEO by valuing different things than Google. But as long as you have a system with a strong monopoly in search directing a huge swath of web traffic, there will be a sort of evolutionary pressure in the direction of what we're seeing on Google. It's not a function of the sort of search enginge Google is, but its market position, and the fact that there is a metric shit-ton of money to be made in successfully adapting to its algorithms.
  - friend_and_foe 4y ago
    But this doesn't negate what I've said. Google no longer cares what results appear in front of you below the ads, unless those results are verboten topics, in which case they're hidden. I use Marginalia reasonably often and quite like it BTW. It's a good tool. But there's a reason most of the popular alternatives to google are metasearch engines, it's because outperforming google is hard. So google threw in the towel, gave up competing on quality and now simply buys their way into every web connected product as the default interface to information to ensure hegemony. Marginalia succeeds at sifting through the SEO for the reasons you said, but then comes the problem of actual search, and even with Google being the big gas giant attracting all the garbage, nobody competes with peak google in quality, for a variety of reasons.

by baxtr 4y ago

drpixie 4y ago

Agree. But not sure what you mean by the "top 5%". Google have deliberately stopped trying to provide an index of the web. They now focus solely on revenue (advertising) maximization. A search will show paid sites, then popular sites, up to a few pages, and that's it. For example, search for "brioche buns" - you can't convince me that there are only 420 pages in the entire www that refer to "brioche buns" :(

charcircuit 4y ago
>About 11,300,000 results I get a lot more than 400.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- throwaway1851 4y ago
  Those results aren’t real. If you actually try to retrieve them, you will find out that Google stops delivering unique results after a few pages. (Other search engines are the same in this respect.)
  - charcircuit 4y ago
    Yes, they are real. It will stop ranking them after a few pages because the results become worse and it becomes too expensive to rank.
Falkon1313 4y ago
It seems if a site is not selling something, and/or buying ads, and isn't in the most popular social media sites, Google just dumps it into the "No one knows what lies beyond this border" bin. Tons of forums, blogs, personal and informational sites, etc., all hidden somewhere in the fog beyond the 'edge of the world' and 'here be dragons' signs.
baxtr 4y ago
Sorry I was not more precise. I meant the top 5% of internet users. The most experienced / most demanding users.

friend_and_foe 4y ago

I'm not buying this explanation. Google isn't delivering information based on what's relevant to users, Google is funneling you into their business: to funnel you into someone else's business. And they're doing it not by being very useful, but by being the default you reach for on every product you buy. To set up your life to not use google is a big hassle, I can safely say this because I've done it. This is not simply an issue of "your needs are simply more advanced than normies", this is an issue of "indexing the internet doesnt work, we can't win the cat and mouse game of SEO, so we will just ensure a userbase by controlling the environment around everyone." Sprinkle in a little bit of gaslighting and information control and you've got the current state of affairs with regard to internet search.

marginalia_nu 4y ago
This is mainly an effect of Google being such a dominant player though. The sort of search results that are dominating Google is essentially a sort of local minimum in the fitness function. It's pretty easy to create an search engine that outperforms google in dealing with SEO by valuing different things than Google. But as long as you have a system with a strong monopoly in search directing a huge swath of web traffic, there will be a sort of evolutionary pressure in the direction of what we're seeing on Google. It's not a function of the sort of search enginge Google is, but its market position, and the fact that there is a metric shit-ton of money to be made in successfully adapting to its algorithms.
- friend_and_foe 4y ago
  But this doesn't negate what I've said. Google no longer cares what results appear in front of you below the ads, unless those results are verboten topics, in which case they're hidden. I use Marginalia reasonably often and quite like it BTW. It's a good tool. But there's a reason most of the popular alternatives to google are metasearch engines, it's because outperforming google is hard. So google threw in the towel, gave up competing on quality and now simply buys their way into every web connected product as the default interface to information to ensure hegemony. Marginalia succeeds at sifting through the SEO for the reasons you said, but then comes the problem of actual search, and even with Google being the big gas giant attracting all the garbage, nobody competes with peak google in quality, for a variety of reasons.